Bring Me a Dream
by NeoNails
Summary: "The first one's always the worst," he told her. She supposed that was meant to make her feel better but somehow she only felt worse. "Yeah, I kinda figured," she replied. "Except I was hoping this would be a one time deal."


I was not planning on writing anything for _Arrow_, largely because I haven't been writing anything for some time now on this site, but it turns out I was lucky enough for inspiration to hit. I mostly blame Felicity Smoak, largely because I have a weakness for spunky female nerds on TV (see: Garcia from _Criminal Minds_—the two of them would _so_ be bffls if they were both real).

In any case, you can see that this is a far cry from my first fic (so close to a 100!), but I'll still be playing with the characters a little bit until I can get a good working handle on their individual voices.

For the record, this contains spoilers for last night's episode, _Salvation_ (1.18).

$4$

_I painted a picture of the things I wanted most  
To color in the darker side of all my brightest hopes  
But there's a monster standing where you should be  
So I'll paint you wings  
Now I'll set you free_

- "Paint You Wings" by All Time Low

* * *

Nightmares were commonplace for Oliver Queen. They were doubtlessly commonplace for any person who had witnessed five years of trauma and then decided to exact vengeance for the following year, but Ollie didn't have the luxury of meeting many people that shared that particular fate.

He recognized that he needed sleep in order to stay on top of his game as… well, he hadn't settled on anything as trivial as a name for his vigilante alter ego, but it sure as hell wasn't going to be 'the Hood.' Sleep was necessary, but it was difficult to accomplish when every hour and a half he was jarred awake by vicious night terrors.

Nearly every night was spent in a constant pattern of asleep and awake, and eventually Ollie had learned to accept the pattern as it came. It was better than how he'd slept on the island, which was to say barely.

Which was why he happened to be awake at 03:47 a.m. when his phone buzzed to life.

On the other side of the city, Felicity Smoak hadn't had anywhere near as tolerable a night.

But for the record, Felicity did not have a habit of losing much sleep. Unless she was doing intentionally, like with World of Warcraft or that time she watched the entirety of _Doctor Who_ on Netflix in less than a month.

Other than that, though, she regularly slept like a rock. She was rather proud of that fact, largely because she had a healthy appreciation for sleep and knew that anyone who knew her ought to appreciate her sleep as well. She could get awful grumpy when deprived of less than her mandatory eight hours.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much she could do about that tonight. Even if she had wanted to fall back to sleep, that wasn't going to be possible. Her first attempt had gone so badly she was honestly too scared to make any subsequent attempts at closing her eyes, much less sleeping.

Her only recourse had been to stay in bed, immobilized, with the comforter up to her chin as she did her best to resist the urge to hyperventilate. Was this what a panic attack felt like? Because she was pretty sure that was happening. That or she was having heart palpitations. Or something.

It was that line of desperate thinking that had her hand sneaking out from under her comforter and snatching her iPhone from its dock. It was a moment of weakness, pathetic really, but if he hadn't made the point of telling her to talk to him whenever she needed it, this never would have happened. Instead, she wound up scrolling to the 'Q' in her contacts and pressing call at—holy hell—quarter to 4. In the morning.

He answered on the second ring. "Everything okay, Felicity?"

He didn't even sound sleepy, the freaky bastard. "Uhh, well, y'know," she began lamely, letting out a string of colorful curses in her head as she forced herself to sit up against the headboard of her bed. "I was up and I figured, 'Wonder what Ollie's doing right now?'"

His chuckle was deep and short. "You couldn't sleep, huh?" he asked, cutting right to the point. She simultaneously loved and hated him for it.

"I made it half the night," she answered flatly, leaning over and flicking on her bedside lamp. The bright yellow glow made her wince at first, but after a few moments her eyes adjusted to the light. "And now I'm pretty sure I'm never going to sleep again."

Her voice wavered a little on the last word, but it was so quiet she was pretty sure he wouldn't notice. "The first one's always the worst," he told her. She supposed that was meant to make her feel better but somehow she only felt worse.

"Yeah, I kinda figured," she replied, her voice unintentionally terse. "Except I was hoping this would be a one-time deal."

Another chuckle. At least she was capable of making him laugh. Well, sort of. "You never really believed that."

Felicity frowned. "No," she said sullenly. "I was just hoping."

When his response was more laughter, her frown turned into a full-on pout. She crossed her arms over her chest as best she could with one hand clutching her phone to her ear. "Shut up," she told him with no real menace to her voice. "I'm still new to this."

Ollie's laughter died down. "If I had it my way, you would never get used to this." His tone had turned so serious that it took her a moment to catch up. Seeing—or hearing—an Ollie that wasn't in full-Hood mode was so rare that Felicity always made a point taking note when it happened. She had known him for less than a year but it felt like closer to a lifetime.

She managed a snort and then replied, "Yeah, I guess you never should've gotten shot then."

"Hindsight and all that," he replied lightly, like his near-death experience was something they could joke about. Which, judging by the remarkable number of scars littering his body she noticed that day, and subsequent days after, she figured near-death experiences were exactly something he could joke about. "I suppose I should take this time to thank you again."

Felicity's lips curled into a smile of their own will, and she replied quietly, "You're welcome. But it's really not necessary. Because I'm pretty sure you've saved my life, like, three times since then."

She shoved her bright, paisley-print comforter and sheets down to her waist, straightening her extra-large t-shirt over her shoulders. She wasn't sure why she was preening, but she couldn't manage to stop. She marked it as something to examine later on, when she was less haggard and twitchy.

"I never should've gotten mad at you in the first place," Ollie said gently. "You're so intelligent, I forget sometimes that you're not used to seeing what I see every day. You're not used to working under the same kind of pressure that Dig and I are."

The childish part of Felicity's brain wanted to argue with him on that one, largely because she had worked her way up the ladder of Queen Industries on her own, in a field that was dominated by men. But Felicity quashed that belligerent voice, because she had to recognize that he _was_ right and she _wasn't_ experienced in this world, and up until a month ago, she hadn't even realized that would be an option for her.

"I thought I could save him," she admitted, and the thought made despair claw at her chest. "I really—"

"There was no way you could have known that he was operating in Starling's defunct subway," he interrupted her. "I didn't even know Starling had a subway. That's not your fault."

Felicity wanted to believe him. She really did. She really only spent time with Vigilante Ollie, and he wasn't a guy that really took time out of his day to make a girl feel okay about herself. The sad part was that she was more comfortable with that version of him than anything else. She had to seriously wonder what that said about her psyche if she was starting to identify with the crazy man.

She pulled her knees up to her chest, her pout deepening. "I think I keep forgetting that it only gets worse from here," she admitted, more to herself than anything. "After I saw him—die—all I could think of was, 'How many? How many more people would I see die like that?'"

Confessing all this to Ollie made her stomach twist, because now the thought wasn't floating around her head aimlessly, now it was out in the stratosphere, a permanent acknowledgement of things to come. Felicity dropped her chin on her knees, praying she wouldn't start crying in front of him again.

Ollie was silent, and she knew she had said the wrong thing. She was confiding in a man that had spent five years witnessing the deaths of other people, and probably had a direct hand in many of them. Felicity chewed on her lip, trying to figure out the right thing to say. She was always so terrible at this part. That's why her besties were computers. "Listen, Ollie, it's really late, and I don't want to—"

"I shouldn't have brought you into this," he said, interrupting her before her lame attempt at a goodbye could finish. "I know that, and I knew that the moment I crawled into your car all those weeks ago. But I did this to you, and if I can I'm going to try and keep you from as much of the violence as I can."

Well, fuck. It was damned good she was only talking to him over the phone, because he had seen her tear up way too many times lately and she didn't feel like adding another one to the list. She swallowed thickly, ignoring the lump in her throat as she replied, "I don't know how well that'll work out, but I do appreciate the effort. I never planned on being the IT girl for a vigilante, but I gotta say that I still feel pretty lucky to have you and Dig there to get all protective over me. Kinda feels like I have an extra two big brothers."

The second the words were out of Felicity's mouth, she regretted them, if only for the sheer fact that calling someone like a 'brother' was _so_ not appropriate when you occasionally fantasized about him. But he was laughing at her poorly worded joke, so she figured it wasn't a total bust.

"Don't tell Dig that," Ollie said once his chuckling died down. "He'll take you seriously and start doing a background check on every guy you speak to."

Ollie was so rarely in a joking mood, she couldn't help but feel her own spirits lift a bit. "Uhh, pretty sure that's totally unnecessary," she muttered. "I'm the IT girl. I do my own background checks, thank you very much."

They both chuckled at that, and Felicity's eyes shut contentedly. Her head was still resting on her knees, and she could feel sleep starting to pull at the edges of her mind. "We should do this more often," she murmured without thinking. "Only maybe at a more reasonable hour next time."

Ollie was silent again, and if she wasn't feeling so tired all of a sudden she would probably have taken that time to fuss over whether or not she had gone too far. Instead, she was able to sigh serenely as several seconds passed until he replied quietly, "I think that sounds like a great idea."

Felicity hummed, her lips turning up in a smile. "We could make a regular thing out of it," she said, only a little bit delirious. She hadn't been able to keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds by that point. "Phone chats every second Tuesday."

For some reason, she could just hear him smiling over the phone as he answered, "Every second Tuesday? I think I could manage that."

"Really?" she asked, beyond the point of talking without thinking it through. "Then it's a date."

Ollie laughed at her, and he had a suspicion that she was too exhausted to even get properly embarrassed by her wording. "I'm looking forward to it," he told her sincerely, even though he was pretty sure she probably wouldn't remember this much of the conversation tomorrow morning. "Though for tonight you should maybe start heading to sleep."

"Hmm," she said. It sounded like she already was asleep. "You might be right about that one. I'm gettin' pretty tired."

He hoped she would be able to sleep nightmare-free this time. She didn't have his kind of experience with sleep deprivation, and he didn't want her putting her paid job at risk for him. "Go to bed, Felicity," he instructed, grinning tohimself. If someone asked, he wasn't sure he could explain exactly why he was grinning, but it was happening all the same.

"Mm, fine," she replied, putting on a fake pout to her voice. Unfortunately, it was more or less ruined by the big yawn that hit her on the last syllable. "'M gonna go to bed now. Have good night, Ollie."

"Sleep well, Felicity," he told her, waiting patiently as he heard her murmur once last goodbye before the phone clicked and the line went dead. He set his phone on his dresser, taking a moment to let their short conversation sink into his brain. He couldn't say he ever expected to get to know her this way, but now that it had happened, he had to admit it was worth the hassle. There were times he couldn't really understand her logic or that way she was able to ramble without seeming to take a breath, but he suspected there were times for her when she couldn't really understand him any better.

Ollie suspected that Dig would point out that was the beauty of social interaction; getting to know a person better. Ollie sighed at the thought. He didn't know how this would turn out, but there was no harm in hoping that his darkness didn't taint Felicity any further. That was the least he could do.


End file.
